There are many expressions describing a person in a deprecative or insulting way because of his bad properties or behaviour, which today would more or less trigger a laugh if someone called you that way, e.g.:

Taugenichts

Tunichtgut

Halunke

Bösewicht

Nichtsnutz

Lump

Schuft

...

How come, that so many expressions lose their strong meaning which they surely had in earlier times when it was major being called that way?

1 Answer
1

Language is changing constantly so you can find examples for words that lose their meaning in any field.

Maybe depreciative descriptions are especially vivid, because a lot of those terms are invented by adolescent people. I can imagine that a 16-year-old is not really willing to use the same insults his grandpa uses as they are "not cool". On school yards millions of those terms are used and some manage to spread wide enough to become the new "standard" as the people get older.